Island Worlds (8 page)

"No, but the story's still the same.
Asteroid
is sponsored by Domestic Robots, Inc., which is owned by Space Technologies, Inc., which is a McNaughton firm.
Space Cop
is sponsored by Atlas Cleaning Products, a subsidiary of Eurochemical, which is owned by guess who. It goes all the way through this. Every last show in the first three years of hostile programming was sponsored by a McNaughton subsidiary. Now that's no longer true, because the trend has been set and everybody's leaping on the bandwagon."

Fu smiled like a saint who has just been granted beatific vision. "Boy, I can see I'm going to have to make some real changes in this study before I use it in my thesis! There's one real flaw in all this, though."

"I know," Thor said. "Why the hell would the world's biggest space exploitation company want to torpedo the whole idea of manned settlement of space? They're cutting their own throats."

"Obviously," Fu said, "we're working from incomplete data. There's a factor or factors that're not in our calculations. It could well be that the answers are not to be had here. It might involve the politico-economic situation in the offworld settlements."

"That could well be," Thor admitted. "In any case, I'm going to put a few people onto this and see what I can turn up. Do you have pretty good connections in the professional holo community?"

"I know some people," Fu said. "What do you need?"

"I'm wondering about the Media Writers' Guild. The producers only worry about money and schedules, the studios are interested only in audience share and profit margin but somebody has to write this stuff. If I was looking to get control of what people see in the holos, the writers' guild is the first place I'd try to control. Maybe the directors' guild, too."

"I'll get on it," Fu said. "I won't even charge you for the service."

"If you need money to buy information, let me know," Thor said. Fu signed off and Thor keyed a limited-access number he had never used before. He hoped Bob was at home and not out terrorizing New Jersey or something.

Bob was standing behind a rough wooden table with a motorcycle engine in pieces before him. He looked up irritably, then smiled. "Thor! Wasn't expecting to hear from you. Where are you?"

"L.A. Bob, I'm sending you a study on holoprogramming and I want to tell you about what I've been up to. Sorry to be so abrupt, but I think this is important."

"Send it over," Bob said. He disappeared from range while he fed a crystal-carrier into his set, then he returned. "Now, let's hear it."

Briefly, Thor told his story. Bob looked uncharacteristically somber during the recitation. "I must say," he said, when Thor was finished, "when you decide to rejoin the world, you don't waste time. This looks even worse than I'd feared. The change in attitude in pop holos I already knew about. I didn't think that it was some kind of plot, for Chrissake. I sure as hell didn't think that McNaughton was behind it. Damn!" He filmed for a while. "I told you you'd been out of touch. I've been worse. All this has been going on under my nose and I should've known about it. I'm going to have to do some digging."

"Bob," Thor said, "don't go in blustering and shooting your mouth off. I have a bad feeling about this."

Bob smiled frostily. "I didn't get to be this old by being careless. I'm sorry now that I made such a scene at the party. They'll be watching me. Believe me, Thor, where sex, money or politics are involved, people won't hesitate to kill you. The only thing missing here is sex and it may turn up yet. I'll be busy, but I'll keep a low profile. I have a controlling interest in one or two security agencies, you know. I'll put some people to work. Send me the code for your friend Fu. He sounds like somebody I should get to know. Us pro-spacers may have to go underground soon, and it's not too early to start setting up an organizational apparatus."

"You think it's coming that quick?" Thor asked.

"These people have been at work on this for a long time," Bob said grimly. "You've seen for yourself how far back it goes. They'll make their moves very quickly now that they're in the open. I think it's time for you to see my buddy Swenson. Catch a flight for Montana later today. I'll tell him you're coming."

"Montana?" Thor said. That was cowboys-and-Indians country, never developed beyond the agricultural stage even in this century.

"Yep. He runs a field station there. Protects endangered species of birds."

"Birds?" Thor was flabbergasted. "Tell me more."

The station was tucked into a cleft in the high mountains where the winter's snow still lingered. As the hired rotocraft settled onto the little meadow before the station, the door swung open and a man emerged. Thor had expected someone of Bob's generation and was surprised to see that Swenson was little older than himself. He was a vision from another century, dressed in jeans and plaid lumberjack shirt, with loggers boots and a stetson hat. He waved and Thor climbed from the rented vehicle. They shook hands and Thor took a deep breath of the thin, mountain air. It was a change from L.A.'s sea-level air and smelled much cleaner.

"Come on inside, Mr. Taggart," Swenson said. "From what Bob said to me, we have a lot to talk about."

As they walked toward the station, an unpretentious prefab building, Thor spotted a small bird perched in a nearby pine. It had a striking blue head and red beak. "I never saw one like that around Denver," he said, indicating the bird.

"Not likely you would have," Swenson said. He had a trace of Norwegian accent. "That one's from the Peruvian Andes. It likes the altitude here. The wildlife up there has been dying off fast, since the Amazon basin industrialized. I'm not sure how long the air up here will stay clean, though."

"I thought North American air had been clean for years," Thor said.

"That's a popular misconception," the young man answered. "What got cleaned up was low-level urban air. And only in the first world countries. It's destructively polluted in South and Central America, and in much of Africa and Asia. And pollution isn't the worst of it. The deforestation of the Amazon basin has cut into the oxygen supply."

"I've been hearing about that for years," Thor admitted as he passed through the door. "I thought it was mostly alarmist talk."

"Not any more. Oxygen levels are dropping dangerously worldwide. Even here in the U.S. agriculture is no longer profitable at some higher elevations The air's getting too thin to breathe. Can I get you some coffee?"

"Thanks." Thor looked around the little building. It was as plain and Spartan as a Ranger station, and he got the impression that Swenson spent little time indoors. There was a bunk, a table with two chairs, cooking equipment, a holoset and little else. Swenson set a pot of water on a heater. It seemed that he actually brewed his own coffee. They took seats at opposite sides of the table.

"Bob Ciano tells me," Swenson began, "that you're having some problems with the government that I may be able to help you with."

"That's the case. Did he tell you anything about the nature of my difficulties?"

"Just that you want to emigrate and that it now looks as if all your earthside assets could be seized."

"Right. He tells me that your foundation is in serious financial trouble. It seems we have a community of interest. Over the next few weeks, I'd like to funnel several hundred million into your foundation. Your share of the total sum is fifteen percent."

"You're being awfully trusting. How do you know I wouldn't just take all of it?"

"Bob trusts you, and I trust his judgment. And, to be truthful, I don't have many options. My financial skills aren't the best and I have very little time."

Swenson got up and checked on the coffee. He returned to the table with two thick, old-fashioned china mugs. "What about the interest?"

"I'm not sure when I'll be calling that money back in. Any interest it earns in the meantime we split fifty-fifty."

Swenson thought for a moment. "You're talking about an awfully large contribution to my little foundation here. I can spread it out among some others. That way it'll do a lot more good here and look less suspicious."

"Fine," Thor said. "The more holes it's hidden in, the harder it'll be to trace. Once I'm established offworld, I intend to set up another charitable foundation. When I send you word, you're to transfer the funds, minus your percentage, to the new fund. That should keep you in the clear should the feds come nosing around."

"As long as my foundation and I are in the clear, it sounds good," Swenson said.

"There should be no problem. I'm under no suspicion at the moment. By the time the Council suspects that I've emigrated for good, the money should be safely out of your hands and you're clean. You just transferred a donation from one charitable account to another. Maybe this way I can salvage some of my inheritance and we can save a few birds in the meantime." The two men shook hands.

FOUR

It wasn't the first time he'd been to the Moon, but he had been in his teens on the last visit. He had to reaccustom himself to the one-sixth gravity, relearning the gliding moonwalk. Out on the surface, in the pressure suits, people had to use the bouncy, from-the-ankles hop made famous by the early lunar explorers. Indoors, the Lunaires had developed the glide as a more esthetically pleasing alternative.

The shuttle had set down on the pad in the middle of Armstrong Crater and the elevator had lowered the ship into the sublunar cavern housing all of the settlement's legal vessels. The armored door had slid shut overhead and a passenger umbilicus had snaked out from the nearest wall. It would have been wasteful to pressurize the entire dock.

Customs check was more thorough than he had remembered. The baggage scan was perfunctory. Between the instruments on the Earth end and those aboard the ship, it was almost impossible to sneak anything larger than a microcrystal through conventional transportation. The questioning required for visa validation was far more searching than he remembered it.

"Purpose for visit?" asked the uniformed agent. The man was ignoring Thor and staring into the screen which gave his face a phosphorescent green tinge.

"I'm going to do some caving," Thor said.

"Is this recreational, professional or scholastic?"

"Scholastic. It's part of my grad work in space-habitation engineering."

The customs man punched a code and Thor knew he was keying a list of the occupations which now required licensing. "You are aware," the man said, "that members of your profession are no longer permitted to travel off Luna except aboard earthbound vessels, aren't you?"

"Very aware," Thor said, still burning over his last interview with the Director of Graduate Studies at Yale. "It's just a formality," the self-important little boob had insisted. "We only wish to cooperate with the government on this. Before we can grant your Ph.D. in your field, you have to sign an agreement to be licensed under the new laws. Licensing would be automatic in any case, but refusal to sign would mean that we could not issue your degree."

"Not to mention that it always looks better when the victim acts content to be shafted," Thor muttered.

"I beg your pardon?" the Director said.

Thor told himself to simmer down. He had nothing to gain by disputing with this nonentity. He had no intention of honoring this atrocity, signed or unsigned. "Show me where to sign." The voice of the customs man brought him back to the here and now.

'How long do you intend to stay on Luna?"

"The full length of the visa, sixty days." He wanted to have as long a grace period as possible before people came looking for him. He saw the man's hand straying toward a pressure plate and had a sinking feeling that he was about to key a truth verifier. Thor had never had clandestine conditioning to defeat truthsnoops. He decided it was time to play his hole card. "I also plan to visit my grandparent's gravesite."

The hand hesitated. "Your grandparents were pioneers out here?"

"Yes. Samuel and Laine Taggart."

The hand withdrew from the truthsnoop You're one of
those
Taggarts?" The man was enormously impressed. "Don't hide the fact. That's a respected name in these parts. Drop it from time to time and you'll get the best service in all the hotels. Here's your passport and I hope you enjoy your stay, Mr. Taggart." Thor took the carrier with its tiny crystal and sealed it into his coverall.

At the baggage-claim area Thor hired a hovercar to take him to his hotel. He stuck his card in the dashboard slot and said, "Hilton." The car's fans hissed faintly and it rose on a cushion of air. At one-sixth gee, little power was necessary to raise the little craft, and the controlled environment prevented dust from gathering in most places, so that the hovercar's passing was marked only by a slight displacement of air.

The long sublunar tunnels were brightly lit, dotted at intervals with emergency air and pressure stations, against the unlikely event of a failure of the artificial atmosphere or a breaching of the sublunar system. It was believed that only an act of sabotage or a really large meteoroid strike could cause such a failure.

"Hilton," announced the car. They were pulling into an immense undermoon complex, somewhat reminiscent of the interior of the Watts development, but in much better shape. A vast cave had been hollowed out of the lunar interior to form the settlement of Armstrong. Inside was a multitiered structure facing inward upon an open atrium. It was still the most efficient use of large indoor spaces. In the center of the atrium a fountain played, sending thin streams of water to a seemingly impossible height, from which they fell back to the pool below with stately grace, humidifying the air along the way. The sound made by the falling fluid was something Thor would never have associated with water.

Near the Hilton elevator was an entry to one of the Moon's famous birth clinics. Wealthy women frequently moved to the Moon early in pregnancy in order to endure their condition in low-gravity comfort. The low gravity bestowed a multitude of health benefits. Lower back pain, fallen arches, hernias and varicose veins were all but unknown unless one arrived with them. The Lunar settlements did a lively resort trade for Earthies seeking relief from these and other afflictions, but it was only for the wealthy.

The elevator deposited him in a lobby of modest size. No Lunar hotel had to cope with large crowds of guests. He looked for a check-in screen, but found instead an actual human clerk behind a desk. She was young, pretty, Chinese and breathtakingly slender. Native-born Lunaires had no need of the redundant muscle mass of Earthies. "May I help you?" she asked, smiling brilliantly.

"I'm Thor Taggart. I have a reservation."

"Oh, yes, Mr. Taggart. Here, let me key your card." He passed her the card and she crossed to a slot in a console and thrust it in. She moved with a grace that made him feel gross and clumsy. The finest Earth ballet dancer was a lumbering ox compared to an average Lunaire.

"Here, your room is Blue Six." She handed back the card. "I have something else for you here." She opened a drawer marked with a blue stripe and a numeral six and took out a crystal carrier. "This came for you from Chih' Chin Fu."

Thor took the carrier. "How did he—" then a suspicion struck him. "What's your name?"

"Ambrosia Fu."

"I thought as much. Why didn't he send this to me before I left?"

"He couldn't get it to you in time so he sent it along on the same ship that you took."

"And it got here before I did?"

She smiled again and performed a wonderfully expressive shrug. "It didn't go through all those tedious customs formalities. Why bother?"

"Why, indeed? I can see that Fu is going to be a valuable contact. How do I find the Earthlight Room?"

"Just take the elevator up until it doesn't go any higher. The Earthlight Room is the lounge. There's also a restaurant. They have the best view in Armstrong. Is there anything special you'd like for dinner? Irving Fu runs the kitchen.''

"I might have known. No, I'm still a little queasy from the zero-gee."

"Ask the bartender for his Welcome To Luna Special. It works just about every time."

"Is he a Fu, too?"

"No, his name's Miklos, but he's a cousin. I hope you enjoy your stay."

Thor crossed the lobby to an elevator and stepped aside as a group of Hindustanis emerged and exited through the front door of the hotel, which opened onto a broad terrace overlooking the atrium. Beyond the terrace, Thor could see the lazily-arching columns of water from the fountain far below. He got into the elevator and touched the blue plate. Silently, the elevator ascended several levels and opened for him. Because of the step-back of the tiers, the elevator opened directly onto the "outside" terrace.

As he stepped from the elevator, Thor misjudged his stride and went stumbling over to the waist-high balustrade. He caught the railing and was greeted by a dizzying view of the atrium, three hundred feet below. It was frightening, but the worst consequence of a fall from this spot would have been to land atop the scantily-clad lady on the terrace twelve feet below, not at all an unattractive prospect. He reminded himself that a sheer drop of three hundred feet, at one-sixth gee, would kill him as dead as a fall of fifty feet on Earth.

He managed to make his way to his room without further mishap and let himself in. The room was spacious, its walls and ceiling heavily padded to protect careless Earthies like himself. The bed had a thin mattress, all that was necessary in the light gravity. In its center was an odd, orange cushion. Thor got his second fright of the day when the cushion got up and stretched. It was the biggest, most grossly obese tabby cat he had ever seen.

"How'd you get here?" he asked. He tickled it beneath the chin and the cat purred and kneaded the bedspread. He crossed to the screen and keyed the desk. The face of Ambrosia Fu appeared. "Yes, Mr. Taggart?"

"Who's this?" Thor asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the massive cat, who was now sitting on the bed, licking its left shoulder blade.

"Oh, that's Athos. If you see a lean, stripey gray, that's Porthos and the fluffy, all-white Persian is Aramis."

"How do they get in?"

"We use robot chambermaids, and they never notice the cats. They'll warn us of any human intruders, though. Don't let them con you into feeding them. They scavenge plenty from the kitchens and they ought to be out catching mice anyway."

"You have mice?" Thor asked.

"Oh, not the hotel! We're absolutely vermin-free. But the city has them. Don't worry, they don't carry disease. They're descendants of white lab rats that escaped into the vents and hydroponics fields fifty years ago. They're very smart little beasties."

"I should imagine. Thank you, Miss Fu."

"Just toss Athos out onto the terrace when you want him out. Are you satisfied with the room?"

"Oh. Yes, it's very pleasant. Thank you, Miss Fu." The screen winked out. He turned back in time to see the cat sail off the bed. Sail was the only word for it. It came trotting up to him, bouncing off one tiny foot at a time, its rolls of fat and fluff swaying majestically as it came up to his leg and commenced rubbing and purring. Thor stroked its back. "Haven't been here an hour and I've already made a friend."

The cat's ears perked up, it tensed, its tail twitched, and it launched itself into a fantastic leap, springing twenty feet across the room and clearing the bed by two or three feet. An instant before its front feet struck, Thor saw something white dart from beneath the paws and scurry along the wall. The door was still partly open and the little rat turned and glared at him with feral red eyes before darting out. Athos tried a fast change of direction, but his fat was still obeying Newton's laws of motion and he made a soft splat against the wall before he could work up enough traction to make a dart toward the door. He poked his broad head outside but could see nothing.

"You need to lose some weight, sport," Thor told him. "It was a good try, though. I'll have to tell Miss Fu that this place isn't quite vermin-free after all." Athos looked at him with an expression that said that this was war to the death, and charged off in pursuit of the rat. Thor didn't think much of the fat cat's chances. That had been one smart-looking rat.

He unpacked the few items he had brought and took a shower. He had forgotten how odd water felt here. As if it had the consistency of honey it oozed its way down his body and made its slow way to the drain. Dried, shaved and changed into clean clothes, he felt ready to try the city. He chose an anonymous black jumpsuit of the type worn by at least half the Lunar population and space-dwellers in general. His slick-soled shoes weren't practical here and he reminded himself to buy a pair of the locally-favored soft boots.

Armstrong worked on a round-the-clock schedule, with no attempt at a regulated "day" or "night." With ships coming in at all hours and transports to and from other lunar settlements in constant flux, households and businesses set their own hours for work, sleep and recreation. For convenience, each twenty-four-hour "day" was divided into three eight-hour shifts, observed by all government functions and by almost all manufacturing enterprises using human employees. Which shift was employed for what was largely a matter of individual choice.

Thor decided to explore the city before giving the Earthlight Room a try. He found that it was about the middle of the second shift and he knew that it would be toward the end of the shift that customers began filling up the bars and restaurants. His previous visit to Luna had been years before, and Armstrong had not been one of his stops.

He found the settlement well-populated but not crowded. Unlike the cities of the U.S. and Europe, there were no crowds of idlers, although there were a few ship's crews raucously celebrating the end of lengthy voyages. Clothes were for the most part colorful but functional, without the determinedly eccentric touches so common on Earth. Most people seemed to be intent on some business. There were many visitors and recent emigrants like himself, and he saw quite a few of them entering or leaving the offices of agencies hiring for lunar projects or for projects farther out, on Mars, in the Belt or the even more remote Jovian and Saturnian satellites. The awkward gait of the newcomers was unmistakable.

On impulse, he decided to test the vacuum and try a few of the hiring offices. The first he walked into was a tiny, hole-in-the-wall room with a single, small desk in its center. On the door was a plain sign reading: "Rockbusters, Inc. Work Available." Behind the desk was a man sprawled uncomfortably in a lounge chair. Unlike the vigorously-bouncing Earthies and the gliding Lunaires, this man was plainly used to no gravity at all. He wore a black coverall and vest, both garments sporting a great many pockets along with snap-hooks and tie-straps for fastening things to the person. His coverall had integral stockings instead of the usual boots.

"Looking for work?" the man asked.

"Depends. What do you have to offer?"